I am posting a series of blogs on my favourite Program activity, Inventories. I love them and never tire of them. The benefits are clear and well worth the effort involved. And the more I do, the easier it gets.
Part 1: Spiritual Maintenance
Part 2: Moral versus Personal
Part 3: Writing the Name
Part 4: Special Names
Part 5: Just the facts, ma’am
Part 6: How were you affected?
Part 7: What was my role?
Part 8: The Confessional Conversation
Just the facts ma’am, just the facts
(with apologies to Sgt. Joe Friday, Dragnet)
Column #2 of the classic four column process, the facts that caused you to think of the name in Column #1 of the grudge list. Just the facts.
In my experience it is important to stick to the facts of the situation or actions associated with the name in Column #1. Either something that they did, something you did, or something that happened. Facts that can be seen and heard. Why is that name on your grudge list? That is all.
Facts and feelings can be jumbled together. I worked with a sponsee years ago; his column #2 had entries like “it made me angry” and “it upset me” or “it made me feel ashamed.” I read all these entries and turned to him and asked, “Do you realize that you have written down feelings, not facts?”
He did not miss a beat. He said, “Well, those are facts, that is how I felt and how it made me feel.” He had me. But only for a second. I asked, “If I was looking at the situation, would I see your feelings? Let us consider facts as things that are not inside you. Things that an outside viewer would see. A third party cannot see your feelings. He can only see your reactions, which are facts.”
Why be so fussy? Feelings cloud the accuracy of our perception of what happened. They confuse the actions and the motivations. Sticking to the observable facts reveals the feelings. And it begins to reveal with clarity the defects of character which are intertwined with the emotional reactions. This clarity is lost when I allow myself to describe my feelings as facts.
There is another benefit to this discipline. When isolated, I see that the facts are embarrassingly trivial. In my column #2 I have made entries like “he looked at me wrong,” “he resisted my suggestions,” and “he refused to see things my way.” OMG, how trivial and overly sensitive I am.
In early inventories I might have written, “He made me angry by disagreeing with me.” The emotional baggage hid the triviality of the facts, which in turn masked the self-centered quality of the response.
Sticking to “just the facts” allows the truth of the situation to emerge in all of its triviality.
Stick to the facts, for a couple of good reasons.
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